"It's very hard to take, that result," said tearful Ireland veteran Nicola Symmons. "We're disappointed in our performance, which makes it even worse.

"We have a very talented group of players but we didn't reach our potential. We have some amazing talent coming through - maybe we just need some more time.

"There's probably going to be a huge impact. I hope our sponsors stay with us and just believe that we can make it."

Scotland captain Linda Clement added: "We've taken a lot of belief from the tournament. We now believe we can compete against the top teams and we've probably proven to a lot of the bigger nations that we're a forced to be reckoned with.

"We can set ourselves a goal of making top four [at Glasgow 2014]. We've never done that before and if we keep improving, that's not out of the question."